Catholics Have a Sense of Humor, If Nothing Else

[Zen Badger]

That's why I made sure the people who adopted my youngest son were secular humanists. I was given to the Catholic church at birth, but my mom got me back a couple months later. Of course, I was still raised in the Catholic faith, but never heard of priest molestation until I was an adult. It's not something they talk about at all.

One thing that weirded me out as I got older, and started exploring the world at large was hearing people talk about hell. Hell was never brought up at church or Sunday school. Ever. It was literally a bad word that you had to spell out "H E Double Hockey Sticks" when you were telling on someone for saying it. We were taught that the consequences for being a bad person was a separation from god. No torture, no fire. It wasn't even necessarily permanent. You pray for the souls that are suffering in the absence of god, that he may have mercy upon them, and welcome them to paradise.

I was not traumatized by religious people until I was an adult, so I'm very lucky, I guess. Maybe the priests aren't afraid of burning in hell for molesting little children, but I doubt it. I think that many sexually perverted men- NOT gay men ,per se, but mentally sick men, who were raised in devout catholic homes, thought that by giving their lives to Jesus, it would save them. Especially considering the era in which most of these pedophile priests were raised. Just a thought. This does not, however, reconcile the fact that the Catholic church, as an organization, has handled the matter nothing close to appropriately.

A major part of the problem too being the insistence on celibacy.
Which is strange because there is nothing in the bible demanding it and I'm not aware of any other religion that practices it.